First Age
No one really knows when the First Age began. Each race and culture has their own unique story about the creation of the world and the races that inhabit the world. Elvish records indicate that the First Age began at least 10,000 years before the Dragon War ended and the Second Age began. The Elves lived in their forest homes, the Dwarves had the mountains, Gnomes found space where they could, and the Orcs shared lands with the Dwarves and Elves. The Orcs never really had a place to call their own but instead settled in the fringes; the areas no one else really wanted. The Humans had already diversified into distinct cultural groups. The Elvish records make it clear that there were far too many groups of humans to catalogue them all. The dominant group was the Eldtrium (Eld is Elvish for “old” and Trium is a corruption of the Elvish word for “Human”). There were no Halflings in Valnaria during the First Age (or the Second Age either). The dominant race during the First Age was the Dragons. All of the other races lived in fear of – and paid homage to – the Dragons. This was the normal way of life in the First Age. Civilizations grew and fell, wars were fought, cities grew, cultures thrived, but all of this was overshadowed by the Dragons. Some of the Dragons were kind, benevolent, and even tried to help the other races; most were evil and took great pleasure in tormenting the other races. One day, a Red Dragon named Grimvartrias was taking exceptional pleasure in tormenting a human warrior/prince named Cadowyn. Cadowyn, tired of the constant bullying of the Dragons, lashed out. The stories vary: Cadowyn wounded/maimed/disfigured/killed Grimvartrias with a rock/arrow/spear/sword/axe. Whatever really happened will never be known but the Dragons were outraged by the audacity of this puny human – the war was on. The Dragons made no distinction between human, elf, dwarf, gnome, or orc – all of the races of Valnaria suddenly found themselves at war with the Dragons. It has been speculated that, had the Dragons made a distinction between the races, they could have wiped out the humans and maintained their authority. Instead, a terrible war was waged across the entire world that lasted for decades. Finally, the gods realized that they could no longer ignore the situation and decided to intervene to resolve the situation. The gods decided that power was to be shared equally by all of the races. The Dragons were given the skies, the Dwarves were given the mountains, the Elves were given the forests, and the Humans were given the plains. The Gnomes were overlooked in all of this – which was fine by them. The Orcs then realized that they had been just as much a part of the war as the others (in fact, they had fought the Dragons alongside the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans) but had been given no place of their own. They demanded that they be given the mountains, but the Dwarves refused to give up their land. They then demanded the forests but the Elves were not willing to share their homes with the Orcs. Not knowing what else to do, the gods gave the Orcs the shadows. With this new balance of power in place the First Age ended and the Second Age of Il Miund began.